Anger

A systematic search of the Apple iTunes store was conducted on September 19, 2013, following the PRISMA guidelines for systematic literature reviews [18 (link)]. An exhaustive list of mental-health related mobile apps was created. The following search terms were employed, “Mindfulness” OR “Depression” OR “Wellbeing” OR “Well-being” OR “Mental Health” OR “Anger” OR “CBT” OR “Stress” OR “Distress” OR “Anxiety”.
App inclusion criteria were: (1) English language; (2) free of charge; (3) availability in the Australian iTunes store; and (4) from iTunes categories, “Health & Fitness”, “Lifestyle”, “Medical”, “Productivity”, “Music”, “Education”, and “Utilities”. The category inclusion criteria were based on careful scrutiny of the titles and types of apps present in those categories.
There were 60 apps that were randomly selected using a randomization website [19 ]. The first ten were used for training and piloting purposes. There were two expert raters: (1) a research officer with a Research Masters in Psychology and two years’ experience in mobile app development, and (2) a PhD candidate with a Masters degree in Applied Psychology and over nine years information technology experience, that trialled each of the first 10 apps for a minimum of 10 minutes and then independently rated their quality using the Mobile App Rating Scale (MARS). The raters convened to compare ratings and address ambiguities in the scale content until consensus was reached. The MARS was revised based on that experience, and the remaining 50 mental health and well being related apps were trialled and independently rated. A minimum sample size of 41 is required to establish whether the true interrater reliability lies within .15 of a sample observation of .80, with 87% assurance (based on 10,000 simulation runs) [20 (link)]. The sample size of 50, therefore, provides substantial confidence in the estimation of the interrater reliability in the current study. Data were analyzed with SPSS version 21 (SPSS Inc, Chicago, IL, USA). The internal consistency of the MARS quality subscales and total quality score was calculated using Cronbach alpha. This indicates the degree (correlations) to which items measuring the same general construct produce similar scores. Interrater reliability of the MARS subscales and total score was determined by the intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC) [21 (link)]. This statistic allows for the appropriate calculation of weighted values of rater agreement and accounts for proximity, rather than equality of ratings. A two-way mixed effects, average measures model with absolute agreement was utilized [22 (link)]. The concurrent validity of the MARS total score was examined in relation to the Apple iTunes App Store average star rating for each app (collected from the Apple iTunes App Store on September 19, 2013).

Typically, women had repeatedly experienced several different types of homelessness. But sofa surfing was by far the most long lasting and repeatedly found. Women had wide networks which enabled them to sofa surf for considerable periods of time without exhausting their options. This was often linked with substance misuse and needing access to drugs “I was just sofa surfing. From drug house to drug house to drug house. Me drug addiction got worse and I looked terrible. And I met me baby’s dad through drugs… Met him quite early didn’t fancy him but it was just the drugs, I was there for the drugs (Gillian).
Underlining the importance of understanding sofa surfing as a gateway to exclusion many women detailed the inherent danger and vulnerability in needing to rely on others to find a place to stay:

You get to know people the wrong way sometimes. It’s really sad when you need, you know you’re doing a very dangerous thing... it also exposes the anger. Men who hate women. I always forget the word, misogynist. You become a needy woman, you meet a misogynist (Tracy).

Survival sex is understood as “the exchange of sex for material support” [20 (link)], and has previously found to be common amongst young homeless women [66 ]. Moore’s study, in Australia noted that issues of consent and coercion were obscured within this context [66 ]. The expectation of sex was hinted at by several women and explicitly expressed by Tracy:

I was couch surfing but there was many a night where I’d have to get out of there because they assume that means sex in bed and rock and roll, you know ... Because you owe something. And once you owe something, they can take anything. It’s dirty. It’s a really ugly, you know the word rape is um, is so misunderstood even as a victim of it because if you’re doing it for a place to stay, am I being raped? Or am I f****** him so I can have somewhere to sleep. You know what I mean? Excuse my language. It’s a horrendous place to be.

The routine violence and victimisation associated with sofa surfing is less well evidenced in the literature but well known by the women in this study. In particular sexual exploitation was understood to be prevalent: “I was thinking, “Shall I mention it [sexual exploitation] and I thought well I’m not going to be the only one am I?”(Sienna). That the women in this study were still sofa surfing despite being aware of the inherent dangers highlights the paucity of other options available to them.